As Schaffer suggests, a strong motivating factor in the US decision to promote the BTC pipeline was the anticipated economic benefits for Turkey as well as the desire to link Turkey to the states of the Caucasus and avoid a crisis in the Bosporus by not increasing tanker traffic from the Caspian region. Washington gave the Republic of Georgia special attention and promoted more cooperation with Tbilisi than with neighbouring Armenia and Azerbaijan. The special policy towards Tbilisi is motivated by Georgia’s strategic geographic location on the Black Sea, which confers a pivotal role in the region’s development. Moreover, the special treatment of Georgia may have emanated from the fact that relations with Georgia were less controversial from the US domestic perspective than relations with either Armenia or Azerbaijan.

In addition, it can be argued that Washington seemed to support Georgia’s defiant stance towards Moscow directly or indirectly. It is to be mentioned as well, that although Russia’s policies regarding Georgia were an issue of contention between Washington and Moscow, they were not a central point of discussions held on Russia/US summits or other meetings until the Russia-Georgian war of 2008.

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A strong motivating factor in the US decision to promote the Baky-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline was the anticipated economic

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benefits for Turkey as well as the desire to link Turkey to the states of the Caucasus and avoid a crisis in the Bosphorus by not increasing tanker traffic from the Caspian region. [...]

Washington gave the Republic of Georgia special attention and promoted more cooperation with Tbilisi than with neighbouring Armenia and Azerbaijan. The special policy towards Tbilisi is motivated by Georgia’s strategic geographic location on the Black Sea, which confers a pivotal role in the region’s developments. Moreover, the special treatment of Georgia may have emanated from the fact that relations with Georgia were less controversial from a US domestic perspective than relations with either Armenia or Azerbaijan. In addition, Washington seemed to support Georgia’s defiant stance towards Moscow.

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Russia’s policies regarding Georgia were an issue of contention between Washington and Moscow, but were not a central point of discussion in their summits or other meetings.

The NATO has been hampered in its efforts to address the security challenges by a series of factors: the limitation of mandates, lack of adequate resources, internal disagreements among member states and the absence of strong political will to become more deeply engaged in the region. The west has tended to devote most of its attention to other regions of the world, such as the Balkans, Central Europe, etc; and has failed to devote to the [South Caucasian region the attention and resources it requires.]

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International organisations such as NATO, the UN and the OSCE have been hampered in their efforts to address the security challenges by a series of factors: the limitation of their mandates, their lack of adequate resources, internal disagreements among member states and the absence of strong political will among member countries of the various organisations to become more deeply engaged in the

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region. These organisations have tended to devote most of their attention to other regions of the world, such as the Balkans, Central and Eastern Europe or Africa, and have failed to devote to the South Caucasian region the attention and resources it requires.